The consumption of energy and especially electricity is increasing worldwide; however, installing new large-scale distribution, transmission and/or generation capacity has become increasingly difficult. This is due to factors including increased load on the environment in the form of CO2 emissions and to an unwillingness to invest in a de-regulated and/or fast-changing market. Increased consumption of energy coupled with reduced investment in physical plant, particularly of the traditional energy generation types has contributed to a diminished safety margin between available supply and instantaneous demand. Calculating energy demand forecasts has consequently become more complicated and fluctuations in consumption harder to predict within tighter margins between capacity and demand.
An example of an energy supply system is disclosed in European Patent Specification EP 0 568 822 B1. A system is disclosed for optimising an energy output of a single power generating unit in which an energy output is produced from a combination of different energy sources, a sources that have lesser environmental impacts. The total energy output for that generating unit is optimised at least in part so as to achieve a low or minimised generation of environmental pollutants.
Some recent energy systems have improvements based on Internet communication and/or standards associated with the Internet. U.S. Pat. No. 5,862,391 describes an extensive power management system for electrical power distribution comprising computers equipped for bus communication over a Modbus fieldbus connected to one or more DDE servers (Dynamic Data Exchange). The computers contain various software packages involved in monitoring and controlling selected aspects of power usage/consumption. Communications are described using TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) via Ethernet LANs (Local Area Networks).
EP 814 393 A1 describes use of the Internet as a part of a method to communicate with electrical components, principally appliances in the home, for the purpose of supervision and control. The method requires an intelligent socket to be added to each appliance together with the use of signals superimposed on a power distribution network to communicate control signals.